14,000-year-old settlement in Canada could rewrite North American history

Tuesday, 11 April 2017

The ancient stories of the indigenous Heiltsuk Nation people say that
their ancestors sheltered on a mysterious strip of coastline in Canada
during the last Ice Age. Thanks to a recent discovery of a 14,000-year-old settlement, science is now confirming those claims.

The discovery was made last year along the Central Coast of British Columbia on Triquet Island, CBC News reports. Teams of archaeologists from the Hakai Institute,
University of Victoria, and local First Nations found the remains of
charcoal, tools, fish hooks, spears used to hunt marine mammals, and
even a hand drill used for lighting fires.

Based on the analysis of charcoal found, it's estimated the
settlement was established around 13,613 to 14,086 years ago. This makes
it one of the oldest human settlements in North America. It also means
it's twice as old as the invention of the wheel, three times older than
the Pyramids of Giza, and thousands of years before all of the ice age
megafauna went extinct.

There is also evidence to suggest that the sea-level around Triquet
Island has remained remarkably stable for 15,000 years throughout the
end of the last Ice Age. This again confirms that this area acted as a
haven of stability over the millennia, just as the Heiltsuk Nation have
said all along.

The real importance of the finding lies in explaining how early North
Americans migrated to British Columbia. One theory says that humans came
from Asia and traversed across a bridge of land and ice that connects
Russia to Alaska.

The other theory is that humans traveled by boat. While it is often
thought that early humans would not have had the supplies to walk from
Asia to Alaska, the alternative theory was also dispelled as it was
always assumed the whole coast would have been impassable during the Ice
Age. That, however, is obviously not the case.

Now, armed with this knowledge, indigenous First Nation groups say they
feel that they now have more credence and validity when entering the
often heated battles for land rights.

"When we do go into negotiations, our oral history is what we go to the
table with," William Housty, a member of the Heiltsuk Nation, told CBC News.
"So now we don't just have oral history, we have this archaeological
information. It's not just an arbitrary thing that anyone's making up...
We have a history supported from Western science and archaeology."